I've collected a few more cute and funny things that my students have said. I've started keeping a notebook with me in the classroom so I don't miss these gems.
The first story requires a little info about Korean theme parks. At these Korean theme parks, the staff, whenever they see you, are supposed to shake their hands like this or as if they are unscrewing light bulbs. The one time I went to one of these parks, Everland, my friends and I decided it would be hilarious to do the hand dance, too. Whenever someone would shake their hands at us, we made it a requirement that we had to reciprocate. Months later, I was wondering what my students thought about this hand dancing.
"Why do the people at Everland shake their hands?" I asked.
Annie told me, very matter-of-factly, "They are dancing to give fun."
The way she put it had me reaching for my Student Quote Book.
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At another time, "What is God?" came up in the conversation. God is a tricky thing to explain, regardless of whether you're speaking to native or ESL speakers, but I gave it a shot.
"Who makes people one?" I said. Seriously, that's what I said. I was speaking to Elegance Class, my preschoolers, and I was doing a terrible job with my words.
I tried again: "Who made the first people?"
Yes, that's what I had been trying to say. I swear, my English has taken quite a blow from working here among Korean children every day.
Well, even though I had children from different upbringings, they all caught on. I explained the word we were looking for: God.
Their response? "God is very up the sky."
Priceless.
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Sometimes I like to trick my kids when they're not paying good attention. Ryan of Elegance Class was not listening to the given question, so I threw him a curve ball.
"What is the velocity of an English sparrow?"
It took him many repetitions of the question to realize I was talking about something completely different than the previous topic. When he finally gathered that I was looking for an answer with a number, he shouted, "Two!"
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Again in my preschool class, we do these "Daily Language Activities" in which the students have to find a sentence's mistakes and correct them. I've been highly impressed with how Elegance Class has caught on to so many of the grammar and punctuation rules in the English language. I beam with pride when they point out things that we've never studied in class before. They do, however, still need help with some things.
This picture above shows you one of the sentences from today's Daily Language Activity. The kids quickly caught the lower case "n" in "nan," and they even recognized that "pacific" and "ocean" needed to be capitalized because it's the name of a place. They just didn't know how to say that one word, "Pacific."
The first brave child to stretch out her hand for a try said, "Mm... the 'P' needs to be capital in... nn... 'Paxicle.'"
This is the same adorable kid that said "Tyranopops" instead of "Triceratops" during our dinosaur lesson. If you're the praying type, feel free to pray that these kids' confidence and self esteem aren't too damaged by their teacher who laughs at them sometimes.
